I’d call that view incredibly myopic. THE single source for repression of human sexuality in the world today is religion, and Sharia law is THE oppressor in Muslim countries. Congrats to these women for demonstrating what’s missing from those religions… and doing it in a peaceful, non-violent manner.

There is a time and a place for everything. While I agree that Sharia law is incredibly oppressive, and I also agree that there must be a right to express your opposition to Sharia (or anything else for that matter), disrupting a religious service is NOT an appropriate way of doing it. If they had protested outside the mosque, no problem. But entering it, taking off your clothes, when you know that will be highly offensive to the worshipers (which I suppose was partly the point) is really not cool at all.

Thilo, why is protesting a religiously-inspired law OK, but protesting in front of believers of the religion (and, by implicit consent, the barbaric agrarian laws) is not OK?

We give religion WAY too many get-out-of-jail-free cards as it is.

No religion or religious service has ANY right NOT to be interrupted. Some believers may not like it, but that’s their problem. I’m interested (in this case) by how many of the poor, deluded, worshippers (who would have primarily been men, as the women are caged elsewhere in the mosque) agreed with the women, and how many raged and ranted and threatened death to the apostate females.

That whole “don’t do anything not explicitly approved by a belief system” automatically implies a level of respect for the religion that is utterly undeserved. If their god doesn’t like it, he’ll strike them dead by supernatural means. That’s all the disapproval they deserve.

whoa there….hold on a tick. “No religion or religious service has ANY right NOT to be interrupted. “, have you forgotten about basic privacy laws? or would you like to state for the record that you dont mind if we all come protest your supper meal? Turning it into a ‘right to be not interrupted is backwards sophistry.
This has nothing to do with “don’t do anything not explicitly approved by a belief system”. This has to do with don’t be rude. More backwards sophistry. Belief system has nothing to do with it. In fact, you appear to be trying to state that your values are so much better than theirs that you can do what ever the fuck you want.

You’re conflating personal privacy with religious respect – and they are two very different things. I absolutely respect personal privacy. I absolutely do not respect any religious demand for the same prudence. To me, that’s no different to a paedophile asking to be left to play with a child, because it’s rude to burst in on their privacy. And yes, I’m equating religion with paedophilia.

Of course, if you burst in to our dining room, well… after offering you a bite of delicious apple pie, I’d ask you to leave, and if you didn’t comply, I could legally call the police. That’s because you would be in a private dwelling. A church is not a private dwelling, almost by definition!

A church is no different to a street corner – if churchgoers can mutter and moan their stuff, then so can you or I. I’m sure someone would call the cops, and then I’d leave peacefully – after all, I’m not advocating spilling the blood of a virgin chicken over the altar, I’m simply using a public space to express my far, far superior (rational, humane, compassionate) belief. And yes, I’d make a point of pushing that envelope.

Of course, our Australian laws are quite different in many ways to the US’s, and I’m not a lawyer, just a gifted fool, so I may be missing something important – but I doubt it.

Beneath the privacy laws (which I respect and tend to follow scrupulously, by the way!) are freedom of speech laws.

And I do believe that my freedom to say or express whatever I want in any church, mosque, temple, synagogue, or goat pen, trumps their wishes not to hear me. It’s the same with the women in the mosque. What better place to make their 1,300 year old point?

I’m not a rude person, btw. In fact, I’m almost completely the opposite, when dealing with anyone or any business. But since I don’t consider a religious space to be private in any way, walking into a church service to protest that religion’s barbaric and ridiculous beliefs – beliefs that kill people – isn’t rude. It’s mandatory.

I hate it when a breathtakingly courageous action, such as the women in the mosque, is minimised by people saying that they shouldn’t have done it because it was ‘rude’ to the believers. It’s because it was rude that it was done!

And I make a pretty darn good apple and rhubarb pie, by the way. And you’re most welcome to drop in and sample it, any time! :)